This special repertory evening will present three early works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, each of which is based on a piece of classical music. The programme features a combative choreography set to the layered rhythms and harmonies of Bartók’s Quartet n°4, a group piece that defies gravity and depicts the ingenious counterpoint in Beethoven’s Die Grosse Fuge, and a shamelessly romantic duet set to Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Ictus and the Brussels Philharmonic will accompany the pieces live especially for the Brussels series.

The legendary opera Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass, Robert Wilson and Lucinda Childs premièred at the Festival of Avignon in 1976. For this new concertante version, the Ictus ensemble is joining forces with the Collegium Vocale Ghent and with neo-folk legend Suzanne Vega. The musical composition and the musicality of the libretto are the central focus in a minimalist and hypnotizing soundscape that lasts 200 minutes.

Eleanor Bauer loves playing with the codes and concepts of contemporary dance. In New Joy, she confronts the post-truth age: this dataistic cyber-musical knocks straight through the boundaries of various registers. From body language and spoken language to computer language and back again, from emotional to artificial intelligence, from movement to sound. Along with composer Chris Peck, Bauer engages all of your senses in her search for meaning and hidden implications.

In her new creation, Mette Edvardsen explores interfaces with opera, flanked by composer and performer Matteo Fargion. Together, they deconstruct the mythological figure of Penelope, the woman who spent years waiting for her husband Odysseus. But her apparent passivity conceals tremendous power. Be whisked away to this intimate, minimalist dream world, where new relationships are forged between women, the world, and the other.

BL!NDMAN is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and since 1991 it has been a regular guest at Kaaitheater. To celebrate, we are organizing a festive programme! MINIMAL-MAXIMAL – part 1 of the evening – is returning to their minimalistic roots, in the line of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Afterwards, the complete collective ([sax], [drums] and [strings]) along with a DECAP organ will play Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks by G.F. Handel.

Claire Croizé engages with two of her favourite sources of inspiration: Bach and Rilke. She places both masters in the hands of Matteo Fargion, the British composer and multi-instrumentalist. They have not created slavish interpretations of Bach and Rilke, but rather opted for a playful, somewhat unruly tribute.

Ivo Dimchev is one name that cannot be missed from the Performatik programme: the exuberant performer has never missed a single edition. He often depends on audience participation to create his performances, such as P-Project (shown during Performatik13) and FB Theater. This time he is returning with his brand-new selfie concert. Take out your phone… because no selfies means no concert!

If we continue to consume more language more quickly and superficially, will we still be able to use language instinctively and emotionally? PRICE is appealing to movement and music to answer this question. Along with producer Cecile Believ, pianist Sebastian Hirsig, fashion label BARRAGÁN and photographer Mirjam Graf, he will captivate you with his body and voice. You stand next to him on stage, while the soundtrack of heavenly ambient will flow to dark tribal – and back again.

Drummer Will Guthrie and choreographer Mette Ingvartsen are performing together for the first time. You encircle the stage, on which a drum kit, a moving light installation and the bodies of the performers confront each other.

French choreographer and philosopher Noé Soulier is convinced that watching dance is just as creative as dancing itself. In this latest creation, he presents six dancers and two percussionists. The drum sounds add commas and full stops, punctuating or pausing a series of movements, or initiate new actions. Soulier explores the intersection of extremely precise dance writing and pure improvisation!

The vocal ensemble HYOID and artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater Benjamin Vandewalle are adapting Indianerlieder (1972) by Karlheinz Stockhausen, an iconic but rarely performed work. They are creating a gesamtkunstwerk that aims to reveal the vitality and timelessness of Stockhausen’s music. They are abandoning the original scenography in order to place the audience at the very centre of the three-dimensional ritual.

Rokia Traoré is an icon of African music. She narrates the epic of King Soundiata Keita, the King who based his power on respect and not on greed or violence, and the unifier of the great 13th-century Mandé Empire. Traoré blends classic songs by the Mandé griots into her narrative. These poets and singers were responsible for a unique form of oral history.

For their first joint creation, dancer Femke and drummer Lander Gyselinck (STUFF.) decided to swap roles. Lander dances (musically), Femke plays music (dansant), until both become blurred and blend together. Their older brother Wannes, a dramaturg, keeps an eye on the whole work. It’s a family affair...

SAFE begins as a concert and then evolves into a sophisticated audio play. Based on Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995) – in which a woman suffers increasingly intense allergic reactions – Ictus and Julie Pfleiderer sketch a picture of contemporary hypersensitivity. Join an immersive journey that will stimulate all your senses!

Ivo Dimchev is presenting a live and danced version of his first studio album, Sculptures. His sense of musicality and exceptional voice have always been central to his performances, but over the last two years he has definitively chosen the path of music. His breath-taking voice brings the dark poetry of his texts to the fore and ensures a terrifying and deeply moving experience.

In Supersonic Flora, Walter Hus is returning to a number of pivotal pieces from his career and adapting them into brand-new compositions for solo piano. The pieces range from beautiful, radical, and minimalist compositions from the 1980s to more melodious works from the 1990s and a recent jazzy piece that he composed in memory of a friend who died.

The pianist Alain Franco and dancer and choreographer Jean Luc Ducourt are presenting an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations. This Bach cycle is built up around a single aria, which functions as the ‘hardware’ for the whole work.

In 1998, together with the pupils of the Maria Boodschap primary school in Brussels, the composer Walter Hus created a children’s opera about the fantasy of night and dreams. Hus is now reviving this opera with about 300 children from 6 to 13 from the Academy of Word and Music in Sint-Agatha-Berchem (Brussels), where he teaches piano.

The pianist Alain Franco presents an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations. This Bach cycle is built up around a single aria, which functions as the ‘hardware’ for the whole work. Bach composed thirty variations on the aria.

Sema Soma is the second project by PONI. The basis for Sema Soma comprises three key words: ritual, illusion and death. It is a powerful, energetic performance in which codes, signs and forms from theatre, art, film, music and so on are brought together: scraps of various languages which together form a new language. We shall be reviving this successful project in the Kaaitheater’s main theatre.

Willem Breuker composed new music for F.W. Murnau’s 1926 film Faust, one of the great landmarks of expressionist silent film, inspired by Goethe’s classic. Breuker’s wide-ranging musical idiom adds an extra dimension to Murnau’s masterpiece. This marvellous film-concert by Breuker and his group crowns the closing event of the 2006-7 season.

The Wooster Group goes opera. Elizabeth LeCompte directs La Didone (1641) by Cavalli and Busenello, about the tragic love of the Trojan prince Aeneas and the Carthaginian queen Dido. The New Yorkers create an unexpected synergy between courtly romance and science fiction.

For the wedding celebrations of Ferdinando I de Medicis and Christine de Lorraine, in Florence in 1589, six composers wrote interludes for Girolamo Bargagli’s play La Pellegrina. The Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra and the Collegium Vocale bring this music back to life in the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels.

The Italian poet, film-maker and novelist Pier Paolo Pasolini holds a monologue in which he considers politics, violence, power, Utopia, sex, life and death. His mother listens to him and we hear the angelic voice of Pasolini’s young brother who died at a tender age. In Intra-Muros Pasolini directs his last film. Or is it the direction of his own death?